please stay, my pale blue friend | Galerie Greta Meert

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Galerie Greta Meert is pleased to present its fifth solo exhibition by Belgian artist Catharina van Eetvelde. Known for her subtle, attentive approach to drawing, van Eetvelde treats the act itself as a way of being — attuned to presence, gesture, and change. Her works, often shifting between figuration and abstraction, are shaped by a quiet surrender to form and material, bringing together stains, figures, and objects as cohabitants in a shared, resonant space. This exhibition gathers a new body of work — an ensemble of drawings, paintings, and visual propositions — each offering an invitation to look slowly, to listen closely. Rather than delivering conclusions, van Eetvelde’s works remain open: intimate and elusive, rooted and floating, unfolding in the space between earth and sky. Still and daily gladness where: all of Ada a sill, with light above Dominique in green Balzac a table please stay. My pale blue friend in this one continuous picnic grey, grey, yellow a ferry, and indigo returning a sea: portrait of my mother as a young priest. with a pink silk collar. Bruce, maybe a self portrait as a young artist in their current setting five times hit. Pascale a rainbow warrior the car undone in years in and out of angles. Daniela, Daniela Catharina van Eetvelde please stay, my pale blue friend How to give? And if it is from where we slightly lose our balance, where we agree to belong, where we have a rendezvous. We give with slow attention, with tranquility; accepting to be one to the other. In the portraits it is precisely each of them; their images made with the distance and care that one would use in presenting friends to the unknown, made with all possible attention to their forms, their passages.…

This exhibition gathers a new body of work — an ensemble of drawings, paintings, and visual propositions — each offering an invitation to look slowly, to listen closely. Rather than delivering conclusions, van Eetvelde’s works remain open: intimate and elusive, rooted and floating, unfolding in the space between earth and sky.

Still and daily gladness

where: all of Ada

a sill,

with light above

Dominique in green Balzac

a table

please stay.

My pale blue friend

in this

one continuous picnic

grey, grey, yellow

a ferry,

and indigo returning

a sea:

portrait of my mother

as a young priest.

with a pink silk collar.

Bruce, maybe

a self portrait as a young artist

in their current setting

five times hit.

Pascale a rainbow warrior

the car undone in years

in and out of angles.

Daniela, Daniela

Catharina van Eetvelde

please stay, my pale blue friend

How to give? And if it is from where we slightly lose our balance, where we agree to belong, where we have a rendezvous. We give with slow attention, with tranquility; accepting to be one to the other.

In the portraits it is precisely each of them; their images made with the distance and care that one would use in presenting friends to the unknown, made with all possible attention to their forms, their passages. With enough leg for tailor-wise sitting, with enough shoulder to fill her coat. And when colour enters, it is because it wants to. A long pink stain arrives and touches the edge of the page. One stain stretches itself, another one rises, one is remote, the other one is committed. There is also a car and a boat. It leaves at that time and takes you across the river. We take it every day, maybe one day it breaks down, or not, and the river flows underneath. And like all that is here, it is a portrait. Beings equal to things, animated by the same doubts as us.

Each of all is shown in its entirety. It is shown reaching out, sensing, supposing, then each of them is carefully allowed and there is recognition. And in that recognition: a friend, someone to walk along with, together, each within their own secret, between the ground and the sky.

Catharina. When she draws, paints, chooses, it is that she has taken her whole life in her hands, the wounds, the untouched parts, the bad memories and the good ones, all that she is. She can then truly do whatever she wants. A known place where courage and desire meet, where joy and surprise inject themselves in the bloodstream, all straight to the heart. Some drawings disappear. Some paintings are not kept. The others, brought together in an exhibition, are a vow: being here.